Monthly Archives: October 2009

MNN. Oct. 29, 2009. On October 14th 2007, Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, was killed by the RCMP at the customs venue in Vancouver Airport. He was tasered, knocked down and hit again. He screamed in pain on the floor. They fired again, again and again until he died.

Dziekanski had come from Poland to visit his mother, who had been waiting for him at the arrivals level for 7 hours.

A bystander video taped his death with his cell phone. The RCMP were all buffed up with body armor, hand guns, pepper spray and collapsible batons. They said they feared for their safety when he picked up the stapler and waved it at them.

The state is spending millions on an highly publicized investigation into his death.

What’s the difference between this and the attack on Kahentinetha Horn at the Akwesasne border on June 14, 2009? The CBSA Canadian Border Services Agency video taped this vicious assault which they hide for reasons of National Security. Many witnesses have signed affidavits.

Horn was pulled over by the border guards to wait for hours. CBSA and a squad of heavily equipped commandos appeared. They surrounded her car, grabbed her and used stress tactics that brought on a heart attack. The border guards tried to push her to bend forward so the blood would rush into her heart and kill her. She survived.

This attack has been kept out of mainstream news. Every request to the RCMP, OPP and Attorney General of Canada to investigate this crime has been stopped.

Canada does not want a review of their agents torturing and trying to kill a 69 year old woman who was peacefully crossing the border at Akwesasne.

Rally at 1 PM, Victoria Park, (Corner of George St. and Darling St., Brantford, ON). Potluck dinner and social to follow at 5PM at the reclaimed Kanata Village site.

Down with the Brantford Injunction! No Developments on Six Nations Land! Drop all charges against Six Nations land defenders! Meaningful negotiations now!

Speakers include:

Aaron Detlor (Lawyer for the Haudenosaunee Development Institute)

Bev Crawford (Haudenosaunee Hoskanigetah)

Bill Squires (Mohawk Workers)

Chris Harris (Black Action Defense Committee, Toronto)

Dawn Martin-Hill (Dept. of Indigenous Studies, McMaster)

Jan Watson (Co-founder of Community Friends in Caledonia, CAW 555)

Janie Jamieson (Former spokesperson for the DCE Reclamation)

Jim Windle (Brantford TRUE)

Missy Elliott (Young Onkwehonwe United)

Phil Monture (Six Nations Land Claim Expert)

Ruby and Floyd Monture (Six Nations Land Defenders)

Steve Watson (CAW Educational Department)

Tim Reynolds (Brantford TRUE)

Tom Keefer (CUPE 3903 First Nations Solidarity Working Group)

Vince Gilchrist (Haudenosaunee Hoskanigetah)

Brantford, Ontario has become “ground zero” in the struggle over Indigenous rights in Ontario. Most of the city is under landclaim, but instead of halting development until the status of the disputed land can be negotiated, Brantford city council is carrying out an aggressive policy of encouraging the criminalization of Six Nations land defenders. Since 2006, when protests in nearby Caledonia erupted, over 60 people from Six Nations have faced more than 160 criminal charges as they have tried to peacefully stop illegal developments from taking place on their lands.

Indigenous peoples in Canada have marked the geographical limits of capitalist expansion through more than five centuries of permanent resistance. Due to the geography of residual Aboriginal lands, they form a final frontier of capitalist penetration for natural resource extraction, agribusiness, and urban/suburban development. While much of the focus of the economic crisis has centred on foreclosures and job losses in the manufacturing and service sectors, a renewed push for resources – e.g. tar sands, timber, fisheries, mining, suburban sprawl – may tread in the old vices of colonialism, but it has also been ushered in by a new political economy of indigenous dispossession, and with it, spurred a new phase of resistance.

The Zapatista uprising made headlines around the world in 1994, but all across this land, indigenous peoples were also rising up against an “opening up” of their territories for free-market investment. For example, by 1995, the resource industries of BC entered a new phase of expansion at the same point that Aboriginal people were in the midst of establishing claims to what would amount to 110 percent of the provincial land base. Confrontation in Gustafesen Lake by the Secwepemc Nation was accompanied by waves of blockades across the province. In Toronto, native protesters occupied a Revenue Canada office for 29 days, and the occupation of Stoney Pt Provincial Park in Ontario ended tragically with the death of protester Dudley George, killed by police.

A series of policies posing as solutions to self-determination struggles were also introduced. While “self-government” policies appear to promote political autonomy, they are designed to download the “Indian problem” onto native communities by reducing federal involvement and promoting “self-sufficiency” through competitive economic development – key features of the neo-liberal agenda – forcing cash-strapped communities to enter into “fiscal partnerships” with corporations to finance their reserves.